


Complete Metamorphosis

by resistate



Category: The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle
Genre: Anthromorphized Animals, Anthropomorphic, Artists, Bugs & Insects, Colors, Cousins, Emo Artists, Family, Food, Gen, Life as Art, Self-Discovery, Self-Transformation, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/pseuds/resistate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most caterpillars don't even realize they have a choice between the ties of family and the call of their soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complete Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toast_ears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toast_ears/gifts).



_I fled my chrysalis today. Let lighter and more carefree souls than mine linger on twigs and flap fragile wings until they're dry enough to take to air. I bit my way through my cocoon with sharp strong teeth and dropped to the ground with a resounding thud. Less than a day after I began my unwelcome – though not unexpected – transformation, I was free._

_I was certain my escape would shock everyone I know, if only because no one I know knows anything about performance art. Or art. Or anything. Not even Lou. In fact, especially not Lou._

_I crawled as quickly as I could away from everything and everyone I had ever known. I was pleased by my own resolve. I was not, however, shocked. I had seen this coming from miles and miles away._

*****

Inside my egg I can hear the moon crawl across the sky. Some nights, I can hear faraway stars as one by one they emerge from the dark. I can hear plums growing on the tree beside me, straining inside their skins, and I can hear my own tree growing. I can hear my own leaf, quiet at first and then louder and louder as the air surrounding us grows warmer and warmer.

And I can hear voices.  

The voices are only soft, overlapping murmurs. Alongside the murmured voices, I can hear the folding and unfolding of wings. I can hear heads tip to one side in contemplation. I can hear bright sunlight falling down on everything around us.

Though I don't know it at the time, the murmured voices are my family.

I can only hear the voices clearly once I bite my way out of the egg.

Now I am in the world in a different way. I eat my egg – I am very hungry – and listen to my family argue about what to name us. The tiny and very hungry caterpillar on the next leaf is declared to be Kevin. One of my aunts has seen a boy named Kevin through a window once. He had skin the colour of a cooling cup of hot chocolate and very long eyelashes and he liked to chew on the end of his pencils. He looked right at her through the window, my aunt says, and smiled a secret smile. A tall man with pale hair and black glasses snapped at him to pay attention and the boy had turned away. My aunt has never forgotten him.  On the leaf opposite, my own sister Katie has polished off her egg and is starting on her leaf. One of our cousins has named her Katherine after one of his great-grandmothers, but this is declared by many of us to be a mouthful for such a tiny caterpillar and from the start it is shortened to something more manageable.

Eventually – I have hundreds of siblings – I am named Humphrey after Humphrey Bogart. While I have been listening to the moon and the stars and the leaves, one of my mothers has been watching and re-watching  _Sabrina_. (I find out later that there is another version where Julia Ormond transforms into Sabrina, but this version was not that version.) The cinema in the town centre is hosting a classic movie revival and one of the workers, a woman with red glasses, likes to keep the door open a crack so she can slip outside every now and then and have a cigarette. My mother is very taken with Audrey Hepburn's life-changing trip to Paris. She loves a nice high soufflé and longs for one of us to grow up to become a chef.

At first I think it might be me. My egg, if not very tasty, is at least rich in protein, and that is only the beginning. Even for a caterpillar, I eat a lot. Everybody in my family talks about the day I eat through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lolly, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one fairy cake and one slice of watermelon. I love every second of it. I love the biting and chewing especially but I also love being surprised by new flavours and wallowing in the flavours themselves, and of course I love the great game of finding new flavours in the first place. My first ice cream cone is the result of a trip down and along the arm of a woman who has folds and valleys on the soft, almost leaf-like, skin of her hands. One of my sisters says her skin is like this was because she is very old for a woman. The ice cream is cool and delicious and strawberry-flavoured, and the woman doesn’t mind sharing. She sets me down on a blade of grass and walks away, leaning on a stick, I eat the blade of grass too. It is even tastier than the strawberries, so I eat all the surrounding grass too.

My family's voices are affectionate when they recount the story of my feast but what they focus on most is the stomach ache I have that night. Katie says she has never seen anyone look so miserable and Kevin says he is so amazed to see me up and about the next morning he's surprised he doesn't fall off his leaf and break his neck. Then Katie says caterpillars don't have backbones, we have exoskeletons, and who has Kevin been hanging around, anyway, to pick up language like that, and then Kevin says just because Katie ate her way through a library one day it doesn't actually make her smarter than everyone else, and while they are bickering I go down to the river and watch the sunlight making shapes on the water and listen to the wind rustling the long grasses that hug the riverbank.

Later, when Katie and Kevin have made up and we're all of us curled up on a leaf with everyone else, I tell my version. I tell my siblings and our cousins how I woke up the morning after my stomach ache to discover I had grown so much from all of the food I had eaten that my skin had started to split. That happens to everyone, Kevin says loftily. I've shed my skin too, you know. Now who's the smart one? says Katie. Do you want to hear the story or not? I say, and I manage to sound so much like one of our grandfathers that everyone laughs.

I had eaten so much, I say, that I must have grown a new skin. I tell about how I wriggled out of my old tight skin and into my stretchy new skin. It's a very comfortable skin, I make a point of saying, because our cousin Louise is looking a bit worried. Louise chewed her way out of her egg several weeks later than some of the rest of us. Lou's favourite food is any banana so overripe it's practically black. She tells everyone who will listen she's going be a famous punk rock star when she grows up, but right now she's curled into Katie's side, chewing at her lip.

I continue my story. Besides being more comfortable, I say, my new skin is more amazing and also more beautiful. I had transformed. I used to be the same colour green as the underside of a fresh leaf, but all the same, it was a very ordinary shade of green. Now I shimmered and swirled and positively shone with shades of red and blue and gold. I was over the moon. Wasn't I over the moon? I say to Kevin. You were impossible to live with for like, a week, he says. This makes Lou sit up. Really? For a whole  week?

I was as pleased as if I had created my skin myself, I tell her.

Well, in a way you had, says Katie.

I –wait, what?

When Katie explains it, it makes sense. Hadn't the reds and pinks from the cherries and the watermelon and the strawberry ice cream brought out the reds and pinks in my own skin? Weren't my yellows capable of being traced directly back to lollies and Swiss cheese?  Couldn't my new shades of green be as easily from pickles and watermelon rinds as from leaves and grass? Surely the hints of blue that I could now see in certain lights, I had captured from the cake wrapper I'd devoured.

Lou is in awe. You're an  _artist_ , she breathes.

Katie frowns. I wouldn't go that far, she says.

I would go that far, I announce. It seems now that I have been one for a long time—for my whole life, from before that, even—from the time I could first hear stars emerging from the night sky; but it is from this day on, there with my brothers and sisters and cousins on our leaves, that I know I am an artist.

From that point on, my art consumes me. I experiment with the exuberance of oils, the uncertainty of watercolours, even with the subtlety of charcoal. I experiment with sculpture and with creating my own textiles. I became obsessed, for a time, with finger-painting. I eat constantly.

I eat constantly. I shed my skin again, and though I continue to dabble in all mediums, it becomes obvious that my body is my true canvas.

What I long for most, of course, is the day I transform from an ordinary caterpillar into an extraordinary butterfly. Audrey Hepburn arriving home stuffed with elegance and glamour and sophistication will have nothing on me. (By now I have seen  _Sabrina_ several times myself.)

My mother mourns her soufflés. As befits a true artist, I become alienated. I roll my eyes and remind my mother there are thousands of us children. Still, my family remain proud of my creations and my artwork always winds up pinned to the fence surrounding the neighbourhood allotment. One day I am out at the allotment, signing one of my paintings and trying to decide if my new spiky 'H' sufficiently reflects my suffering as an artist – instead of staying on after the matinée as usual, scarfing down the sticky but delicious popcorn that's always left behind and listening to Lou sing along with the end credits, I come home and paint – when one of our fathers flies up beside me.

Wow, he says. I love what you've done with the reds.

I pause, my brush in the air. What, I say.

Over here. He flutters his wing, careful not to touch my painting because if he injures himself, he can't ever grow anything back. One of our uncles lost one of his feet once and now he always stays close to the place where we all chewed out of our eggs. Every morning our cousins bring him nectar and every night his children gather round while he tells stories about his raucous youth. It sounds vile.

The reds you used in the flowers are the exact shade of the sky on a clear bright summer morning, says our father.

Lou is adamant that our fathers don't understand anything at all, ever. I am more patient than my cousin, but one thing nobody who I know understands is experimental art.

This is not  _flowers_ , I say. This is a windmill. A  _black_ windmill.

Our father flutters dangerously close to my painting and studies it. Nope, he says cheerfully. It's definitely red. Red as a blueberry. Red as a moonless night in the heart of winter.  Red as a—

I stop listening. I very carefully loop the tail of the 'y' in Humphrey up and over my name so that it makes a perfect circle.

Tonight, Katie tells me that butterflies see colours and patterns differently that we do.

Tonight, for the first time, I worry about the future.

***

I worry as Katie starts eating further and further afield, and Kevin starts hanging around with a shady-looking hornet named Joe, and Lou and her friends form a band. I withdraw into my art, emerging only to skulk around the bins at the back of the Chinese takeaway with Katie, and loiter in front of the only pub in Joe's village with Joe and Kevin and take Lou back and forth to band practice, each of us dragging a drumstick.

Sometimes I worry that Joe is going to eat us all, but most of the time I just worry about someday not being able to create anything ever again. I immerse myself in my art, emerging only to ask Katie where I can find the sweetest sweetcorn, and Kevin and Joe where I can find the juiciest pears, and Lou where I can find the sourest lemons. Lou tells me she's busy composing a solo and that I can find my own darn lemons. One of our grandmothers overhears this and Lou winds up banned from practice for a week.

I spend that week eating nothing but yellow foods: sweetcorn and pears and lemons, and yellow courgettes and yellow bell peppers and dozens upon dozens of peanut M&Ms (obviously just the yellow ones). I eat so much that I split my skin again without quite meaning to. I slip Lou all the too-pale sweetcorn kernels and extra sheet music and listen to her complain about how utterly unfair everything always is.

Sometimes I worry that Joe's friend Tasha is going to eat us all – I've known Joe long enough to know he's an all right kind of guy – but most of the time I just worry about everything. I am ambivalent about my new appearance – in certain lights, I shine as brightly as the sun – but now I realise all the shades of yellow I am drawn to are the perfect foil for the darkness that lurks deep in my artist's soul. 

I throw myself further than ever into my art, stopping only to eat my way through honey chilli fried squid and pineapple fritters with Katie, and chips and pork scratchings with Kevin and Joe and Joe's friend Tasha, and cookies & cream ice cream with Lou. Lou likes the dark crumbly cookie parts best, but so do I, and so sometimes we scuffle. We always make up quickly though. Kevin says Joe says Tasha will eat us if we don't.

All of us eat and eat and eat. We shed our skins. We become more beautiful and more amazing every single time.

***

One week, instead of suddenly wriggling around in new skins, Katie and Kevin start forming chrysalises. To say that Lou and I don't know what to do with ourselves is an understatement. In the midst of our panic it hits me that we are probably both experiencing the same sort of breakdown that artists often experience. Joe laughs at us, but kindly. Tasha is cool as a cucumber and says haven't we ever heard about the ugly duckling who turned into a swan, and also, haven't we been paying attention? Lou tries to punch Tasha in the face but Tasha just flies off. Joe follows her. The two of them return in minutes with the large wings of our mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles flapping right behind Joe and Tasha's smaller wings. Our families try in vain to comfort me and Lou and our other brothers and sisters and cousins who are, despite everything, caught unawares.

The next week is beyond anything I have ever experienced. I don't paint or draw or sew or sculpt. I don't eat anything but some dead grass and half of a shrivelled apple. If this is growing up, I want nothing to do with it. Lou eats the other half of the apple: in solidarity, I think, but then she eats a bag of pear drops and box of California raisins and an entire pepperoni pizza, and gets a new skin. Afterwards, Lou looks half embarrassed and half pleased with herself. I tell her she looks great. I am hungry enough by now that we split a tin of sardines packed in sunflower oil and enough fermented grapes on the vine that we both get a bit tipsy. I tell Lou she doesn't actually look so great; in fact, she's looking a little green at the gills.

The next day, Louise starts forming a chrysalis too.

*****

After I break out of my cocoon, my art becomes more than a passion; it becomes my life's work. I eat, sleep and breathe whatever I'm creating at the moment. I don't have time to worry about anything else, or anybody else.

Kevin and Katie find me one day in early summer and hover in the air above me as I paint. Their identical dust-brown wings, flecked with gold, make them look more like siblings than ever. Katie's lopsided mouth is still Katie's though, and Kevin's sleepy eye is still Kevin's.

I itch to sketch the two of them, to try to capture the way their scales shift colour in the changing light: now brown, now black, now brown again, but a slightly lighter shade. I resist the urge to drag out my pencils.

Katie and Kevin talk at me, and I try not to listen. They say they'll come back sometime. I don't say anything. After a while, they fly away.

A day later, or maybe two days, or a week – I tend to lose track of time when I'm working – Louise finds me. I notice that her wings are a purple so deep they're almost black. Lou hovers between me and the sketch I'm working on, dangerously close to both. Are you stupid? I yell at her. Do you  want to break yourself?

Lou's wings beat furiously. If you think this – a sharp flick of one wing takes in my solitary workshop – is all there is, then you're the one who's stupid. Lou tells me that she sings now instead of drumming. Her band has transformed itself into an  a cappella group.

I tell Lou she's a sell-out. For a moment, her wings stutter and her antennae droop. Then Lou lifts her chin. She doesn't say anything. I think to myself that it's just as well. What is there to say?

Lou flies away.

After a while, Katie and Kevin stop coming by.

A while after that, I start to miss them.

***

One morning at the height of summer, I hear voices outside. I try ignoring them, but by lunchtime I can't contain my curiosity. I stick my brushes in a jar of turpentine and leave the abandoned shed I use as a studio.

The voices are just the trees circling my studio whistling to each other through the wind. I decide that I may as well have lunch outside today. I eat some leaves and four different kinds of grass, each with a different flavour, and an orange that I find at the edge of the meadow. Far above me, in the clouds, I can hear water droplets start to huddle together. I hurry to make it back to my shed ahead of the rain.

The next day, I eat in the meadow again – more grass; it's a grass smorgasbord, grass as far as the eye can see, nothing but grass – and as I cross back into the woods I can hear the ivy as it claws its way up the trunks of trees.

I get sick of grass and start eating further and further afield. There's a park nestled between the river and the southernmost edge of the town that does great leftovers: sandwich crusts and not-entirely-empty packets of crisps and the odd apple core. One day I am hanging out on a branch over the river, listening to its secrets, when Katie flies by. I assume that she hasn't seen me, but a couple of minutes later she's back, hovering uncertainly in the air above the river.

Hi, I say.

Katie takes a seat on a nearby branch. Her wings flutter at a slower and slower rate, until they're nearly still. Hello, she says.

I don't know what to say. I think: I miss you, and: I'm sorry, and: I don't know what to do. I don't say anything. After a while, Katie flies away.

After that, I go to the river so often that I wind up moving my workspace so it's under one of the benches in the park. I pin my paintings to the side of the bin and become friends, sort of, with a hornet named Stacey who sees my work when she's picking up dinner and stops in to say she likes my style. One day not long after she brings some of what she calls her more abstract stuff around to show me, and it turns out I like her style too.

We go and check out an exhibit that's on in the town hall, and since it's a market day we go out for food afterwards, and pretty soon we're friends, probably. Stacey introduces me to her girlfriend and her kids and I tell her a little bit about how I ended up under a park bench next to the river. I tell her I always wanted an open-air studio, and she laughs and says it seems to suit me. When she stops laughing, she says she can see my story in my work. I end up spending a lot of time thinking about what she said.

Katie comes back one afternoon just as the days are drawing in and the leaves are losing their fresh taste. I have a bit more to say to her than before, and then a bit more again the next time I see her. I keep hoping she will bring Lou. She never does, and I can’t quite bring myself to ask how she is or what’s she’s doing.

We wind up talking about a lot of things, eventually. We talk about the different ways there are to be in the world. Katie says there's no such thing as a baby butterfly. I say there is too such a thing as an adult caterpillar. I don't know if she's right, if I'm right, if we're both wrong. She says I need to start calling her Kate now that she's grown up. She says I should come home sometime, any time, day or night. She says she still has my canvases and my charcoals, and that I can eat everything in sight, but only if I want to.

I say I might visit, that I will probably visit, that one day soon I will almost certainly pull myself forward in a loop, as caterpillars do, and I will follow my muse, as artists do. I will set out to find Katie. Kate. Kate and Kevin and Joe and Tasha.

And Lou.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My fabulous betas went above and beyond. You know who you are. Thank you. (Credit will be added after reveals.)


End file.
